


Recusant

by foggynite



Category: Murder by Numbers (2002)
Genre: M/M, POV First Person, Post-Canon, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, maladaptive behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foggynite/pseuds/foggynite
Summary: Justin reflects on all that should have-- could have-- been.
Relationships: Richard Haywood/Justin Pendleton
Kudos: 1





	Recusant

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to FFN on Feb 15, 2003.

It was supposed to be the ultimate act of communion-Her blood, her anonymous blood, to tie us so inextricably close to each other. To unravel Justin and unravel Richard and create a new being in one single image. One entity that lay entwined forever.

How could I be so blind?

The act in and of itself was meant to release us from the constraints of an apathetic and hypocritical society. Meant for us to give up our roles as ordinary high school students and evolve past the sniveling herd milling around us. A single act of defiance against everything ~they~ stood for, everything they believed in and created and forced us to conform to without ever really looking at the bodies beneath their boot heels.

So pathetic, to let them tread all over me.

I don't regret the act. I only regret that I was too weak to achieve my full potential. I had the opportunity to raise myself above the cattle, but instead I placed my trust in my betrayer, my Judas, and fell victim to my own humanity.

Did he think of me, I wonder, as he lay broken?

Now they analyze and prod and think they have my complex brain mapped out beneath their fingers. Whisper around their smirks that I'm just a confused child who read too many philosophy essays and was frustrated with my own sexual indecisiveness. That Richard seduced me, plied me with drugs and alcohol, and sent me down my evil path, a merry devil in red velvet and black leather.

Maybe they're right. Maybe I would never have contemplated acting on my theories had he not been there, slipping away. Maybe in a few days, a few months, he would have finally realized whom it was he was secretly meeting, permeating, and then he would have realized that he could advance beyond our pact. That he could leave me far behind, in the dust of memory.

Maybe he would have left and I wouldn't be here in this cell, but rather in my own claustrophobic bedroom, contemplating the edge of a knife instead of trying to swallow my own tongue.

For a while after he died, I thought him a coward, a terrified little boy who didn't want to accept responsibility for his actions. I thought of him as hateful and selfish and self-serving, and constructed a thousand ways he would have betrayed me if he had survived.

But it was all lies.

I know now what these psychologists and police officers have been trying to make me realize. When the final opportunity arose to cast off these suffocating chains of society, I balked. I was too afraid to leave the comfortable umbrella of my life, so I cowered and I lied and I tried to manipulate my way out of the situation.

But Richard-Richard was the one who was willing to aim the gun, willing to writhe and claw his way out of the shackles of our so-called morality. He threw away the baggage of society in a desperate act of survival, while I stood there and bled as he became everything I wanted to be.

I stood by as he suffered the consequences of my own ill-forged plan. If only I had taken more care, we might have had our liberation. But he was fallible and I was weak, and he was willing to do what had to be done to survive, while I-

I let us unravel.

So I will find myself a rose-colored tree and cast myself out over the valley, waiting for my rope to break, so that I, too, might be dashed upon the rocks.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://jrocci.tumblr.com/)


End file.
